— Mitch McConnell, who has been in a very tough race with Democratic candidate Alison Grimes, just took a big blow when his campaign manager, Jesse Benton, resigned today. Seems that back in 2012, when Benton worked for Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign, he was involved in getting Kent Sorenson, then an Iowa state Senator, to switch his endorsement from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul, a move which Sorenson, on pleading guilty to Federal bribery charges Wednesday, says the Paul campaign paid him $73,000 to make. (Benton, by the way, is married to Ron Paul’s granddaughter, Valori Pyeatt.)

— A town in West Virginia, where King Coal normally rules without question, has developed a useful funding model for converting to solar power.

Evan Kenney had just turned 18 and registered to vote for the first time when he campaigned to be an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention. Lauding Ronald Reagan’s principles and blasting Keynesian economics at the Lynnfield caucus in April, the Wakefield High School senior beat out several well-known Massachusetts Republicans, including the party’s most recent nominee for governor, Charles D. Baker Jr.

But earlier this month, Kenney was one of 17 delegates and alternates disqualified by a Republican committee deciding who gets to represent Massachusetts Republicans at the national convention in Tampa. Kenney and others had failed to deliver in time an affidavit swearing, under the penalty of perjury, that they would support Mitt Romney’s nomination for president.

[…]

The actions by the GOP establishment in Massachusetts are further disenchanting some libertarians and conservatives who have traditionally been suspicious of the party’s top-down leadership. In a state where Republican registration has dwindled to just 11 percent of registered voters, the party can hardly afford to alienate enthusiastic activists, they say.

There are apparently questions about the legality of these mandatory affidavits, but it doesn’t look like they’ll be enough to allow the Paulistas to be delegates at the RNC in Tampa.

Wonder if the other state-level GOP orgs are following the Massachusetts GOP’s lead in this regard?

Ever wonder why Ron Paul, the anti-establishment Republican, the hater of “ObamaCare”, the darling of hard-core conservatives and free-market libertarians as well as those progressives who actually think he means what he says about upholding the Constitution, hasn’t laid a glove on Mitt “RomneyCare” Romney since the start of the primaries?

With Paul still in the race, it becomes much harder for whatever other non-Romney candidate might emerge, because the anti-Romney vote is suddenly split in two.

If Paul can continue to take 15 or 20 percent of the vote — or even just 10 percent — in these contests, the threshold of victory for Romney in that three-way race is much lower than it would be in a head-to-head race.

And the more Romney keeps finishing first, the more it will be clear that he’s the presumptive nominee, which will probably only increase the margin of his victories. At that point, it will likely be impossible for the non-Romney candidate to continue to fund and run a real campaign.

Remember 2008, when Mike Huckabee seemed to be sticking around even as the race was pretty clearly coming down to Romney and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)? Huckabee’s continued presence in that race — particularly on Super Tuesday — similarly split the anti-McCain vote and probably ruined any chance Romney had of overtaking the frontrunner.

This time, Romney could very well be on the winning side of that equation.

Despite deep differences on a range of issues, Romney and Paul became friends in 2008, the last time both ran for president. So did their wives, Ann Romney and Carol Paul. The former Massachusetts governor compliments the Texas congressman during debates, praising Paul’s religious faith during the last one, in Jacksonville, Fla. Immediately afterward, as is often the case, the Pauls and the Romneys gravitated toward one another to say hello.

The Romney-Paul alliance is more than a curious connection. It is a strategic partnership: for Paul, an opportunity to gain a seat at the table if his long-shot bid for the presidency fails; for Romney, a chance to gain support from one of the most vibrant subgroups within the Republican Party.

[…]

Romney’s aides are “quietly in touch with Ron Paul,” according to a Republican adviser who is in contact with the Romney campaign and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss its internal thinking. The two campaigns have coordinated on minor things, the adviser said — even small details, such as staggering the timing of each candidate’s appearance on television the night of the New Hampshire primary for maximum effect.

I don’t know if this is true, but some of the facts are well-known, and if it’s true in any measure, the people who are supporting Ron Paul will be asked to shuffle across the convention floor to support Mitt Romney, not in exchange for the Vice Presidency, and not even for a cabinet posting, but for a speech for Paul and his Senator son in prime-time during the Republican National convention. Ron Paul supporters should know that this is the extent of the goal of this entire campaign, and that Mitt Romney has designs on their support. This is the reason that throughout these debates, and throughout the campaigns, Ron Paul hasn’t run one negative ad against Romney, and hasn’t even ruffled Mitt’s feathers in any of the debates. He has a strategic alliance, and he’s willing to carry out this charade in order to get a speaking platform for he and his son.

This leads me to several questions I have long suspected I would have to ask of the folks who have with such vigor and diligence supported Ron Paul, through thick and thin, and against the taunts of most of the other campaigns or candidates. Is that what you Paul supporters have been angling to achieve? Will you put down your Paul signs and pick up Romney placards instead? Is this the ultimate meaning of your money bombs, your poll-slamming, and all the other activities in which you have participated in support of Ron Paul’s agenda? How much influence do you now think Paul will wield in a Mitt Romney administration? Do you think Romney will legalize drugs? What about the military and foreign aid budgets? What of the commitment to the Constitution? What becomes of eliminating the Federal Reserve? What will you do when you discover that not only has your candidate undercut you, but that all he managed for your trouble were twenty-four dollars worth of costume conservatism?

Like this:

An interesting debate began, initiated by a recent troll graduate of our School on Manners. With a national machine of committed supporters, Ron Paul could be the GOP nominee for the presidency as Santorum’s deficiencies become more obvious and the attacks on Romney continue to chip away. So, understanding who Ron Paul is in the dextro universe is starting to look like a worthwhile question to ask. Is he a populist crackpot libertarian, or is he part of the corporate-funded reactionary network exemplified by David and Charles Koch?

What seems unambiguous is that Paul is fundamentally part of what is called the paranoid right, a movement that spans from the Freemen of Montana and the Michigan Militia to the John Birch Society to Pat Robertson and on and on. The basic theme of the paranoid right is that there is a gigantic conspiracy, often dominated by shadowy forces like the Bilderbergers, the Freemasons, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations or the Communists to take away American freedoms. The completely open conspiracies, such as that of corporations to dominate speech and of Republicans to deny people the right to vote are overlooked in the quest to find a conspiracy so immense that it doesn’t quite fit into the human universe.

The evidence connecting Paul to the paranoid right is pretty straightforward.
* The content of his survivalist newsletters, such as the militant rhetoric offering to fight a war with the feds here (also notice the reference to the Trilateral Commission; see also here) or this gem about the conspiracy between USAID/OPIC/the Ex-Im Bank and “Marxist” Panamanian president Torrijos, or the claim that the US government created AIDS, or that the the Interfaith alliance is a “hit squad” with “more friends in high places than the Christian Coalition can hope for”, that NPR is a socialist enterprise. There’s a big invisible conspiracy that only Ron Paul can see, but it requires being ready to fight a war against the US government. [TNR has released more and in some ways juicier newsletters here]
* His speeches to the John Birch Society (see, for example, here).
* His early support by David Koch. David Koch’s father was a founding member of the John Birch Society, but I haven’t yet found direct connections between David Koch and the JBS; Jane Mayer presents some evidence against this, although clearly both the JBS and the Koch brothers share many ideological roots. Charles Pierce does connect the younger Kochs, but supplies no evidence.
* The involvement of Paul aides like Stewart Rhodes in second wave Patriot militias, espousing extreme anti-government rhetoric.

So, here are some resources on the Kochs, the John Birch Society, and Ron Paul.

Mike Konczal, Roosevelt Institute clearly thinks that there’s no link at all between the Kochs and Paul:

Ron Paul is holding one of his first monetary policy hearings today and he hasn’t sold out. Ron Paul is from the school of libertarians that hates D.C. libertarians, which is weird since he is one of the most well-known libertarians in D.C. How does that work?

The term Kochtopus was originally used as a slur by some libertarians to describe the Koch brothers’ funded wing of the libertarian movement (Cato, Reason, etc.). There’s a lot of fighting over ideology, purity, funding and intellectual legacies between two groups of libertarians that splintered in the late 1970s/early 1980s, and Paul is on the other side of that divide.

Daniela Perdomo, Alternet on the Tea Party attempt to bring down Ron Paul; this could be consistent with Koch influence on the Tea Party:

Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas’ Gulf Coast, faces three Republican challengers this year — more than in his six past primaries combined. All three opponents are affiliated with the Tea Party movement. What makes this so fascinating is the fact that the Tea Partiers got their unofficial start through Paul himself.

Ed Pilkington, Common Dreams comments on how the Kochs plan to flood the 2012 election with enough money to control the outcome:

The secretive oil billionaires the Koch brothers are close to launching a nationwide database connecting millions of Americans who share their anti-government and libertarian views
…
The voter file was set up by the Kochs 18 months ago with $2.5m of their seed money, and is being developed by a hand-picked team of the brothers’ advisers. It has been given the name Themis, after the Greek goddess who imposes divine order on human affairs.
…
Though the Kochs have already stamped their influence on the American right, their impact to date looks like small beer compared with their ambitious plans for 2012. According to Kenneth Vogel of Politico, the brothers intend to use their leverage among billionaire conservatives to pump more than $200m into the proceedings

The Koch brothers have a long history of influence peddling through front groups like Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which had a role in the formation of the Tea Party. Many Republican presidential hopefuls have been in attendance at AFP events like the annual Defending the American Dream Summit. These Summits focus on issues like reversing environmental protections, preventing new environmental laws and promoting policies that benefit big oil. At the October 5, 2007 Summit, the GOP Presidential candidates who attended included John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson. The speakers that day included Herman Cain and AFP founder David Koch.

Little has been written about Harry Koch. He’s the least-known member of the Koch family, which has been marching under the same laissez-faire banner for the past three generations. Harry Koch emigrated to America in 1888, settled in a North Texas railroad town and became a newspaper publisher and aggressive corporate booster. He advocated for railroad and banking interests, amassing wealth and helping big business fight organized labor and squelch reforms.

Much of the Koch brothers’ ideology can be found in [their grandfather] Harry Koch’s newspaper editorials of nearly a century ago. Take, for instance, the Kochs’ current fight against Social Security. Harry Koch took part in a multi-year right-wing propaganda campaign to shoot down New Deal programs. Grandfather and grandsons employ eerily familiar talking points to bash government pension and welfare programs.

This is where the research stood two weeks ago, when other duties imposed. I’ll try to pick it up, since understanding where in the dextro universe Ron Paul stands is important to understanding the derangement that America is going through. In many ways, the current Republican candidates (Romney, Santorum, Perry, Gingrich, and Paul) clearly illustrate what the Republican party is:

* The financial corporate right (Romney) is in the driver’s seat.
* The domestic corporate right (Gingrich) is unhappy with American decline, and is therefore willing to bloody Romney
* The religious right (Santorum) and the populist/racist/xenophobic right (Perry) are in a weak position
* The paranoid right (Paul), which includes a lot of military people presumably alienated by the wars, is attracted to the corporate libertarian views of Paul.

If you’re part of the reality-based community and you’ve been following politics in America for the last decade or so, then you likely knew about the Ron Paul newsletters — and their bigoted contents — well before establishment Republican media outlets dredged them up again to lob at him. (The first time they were dredged up, it was lefties who did the dredging.)

This is fantastically good news for Ron Paul. If he can Hoover up even a quarter of Bachmann’s Iowa supporters, he beats Romney easily. Mitt’s going to have to go into fricking overdrive now — I expect to see him dump another $10 million in ads in the next few days.